


i’ll shuck all the life from my skin (& hide it in you)

by possibilist



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 02:21:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2490926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilist/pseuds/possibilist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'But here you are, again, in love with a beautiful girl who thinks far too much of the world, who wouldn’t believe the darkness even if she was forced to see it herself.' post ep22, sometimes the past circles. carmilla x laura, angsty little drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i’ll shuck all the life from my skin (& hide it in you)

i’ll shuck all the life from my skin (& hide it in you)  
.  
they want to stop but they don’t stop. they cannot get the bullet out. cut me open & the light streams out. stitch me up & the light keeps streaming out between the stitches. midnight junes. midnight july. they’re been going at it for days now. getting the bullet out. digging out the bullet & holding it up to the light, the light. digging out the bullet & holding it up to the light. —richard siken, ‘the dislocated room’  
/  
You’ve been in the shower for twenty minutes and the water has long since run cold, but you can’t stop shaking, your hands trembling as you brace them against the wall and take deep, deep breaths, hair in your eyes.  
You can’t talk about it and you can’t forget and you cannot, by any means, go through it again, so here you are, standing in a shower in a university, when you should be getting as far away as possible—as far away from your mother, this place—from Laura.  
None of this should be—can be—happening again. But it is, and you don’t quite remember what it felt like to have a heartbeat, but if any part of you right now was pumping blood, it would be moving far, far too fast.  
.  
“Carmilla,” she yells, and you hate that there’s a tinge of worry in her voice. It’s been about half an hour by now, and then you hear a knock on the door. “Hey,” Laura says from the other side, then cracks it open. “I know you’re pissed and that I’m also pissed but staying in the shower for an indefinite period of time in the middle of the night isn’t—”  
It takes everything you have not to break down, but you steady your voice far more than your hands and say, “Fuck off,” with as much chill as you have left.  
You hear her breathe closely for a few moments, but then she sighs and the door closes, and her scent fades.   
.  
It’s your fault, really, for not telling her: you calm down enough until only your hands shake, and you dry off quickly. She’s asleep when you walk out, or at least she has the lights off and her back is to you. You’re entirely exhausted and you feel sick, but there’s no way in hell you could ever stay inside right now, in the dark, enclosed space.  
So you put on a beanie and one of Laura’s oversized sweaters—one of her few fashionable items—and tug on your boots. You sit in the middle of the quad, and you lay back and count the stars in as many languages as you can remember.  
.  
You’ve just woken up and you’re sitting sullenly on your bed when she comes in from her last lecture of the week; you’re trying to read your favorite Benjamin text again—usually it’s comforting, to contemplate the idea of cyclical as well as linear time—but today his lovely French is only making your stomach sink even further.  
“Hey,” she says when you don’t look up.  
Her voice makes you jump, and you see her raise an eyebrow out of the corner of your vision.  
“Look who’s twitchy today,” she says, sort of triumphant.  
You put down your book and level her with a glare. “I’m really not up for any of this shit today.”  
You sound disaffected and miserable—and defeated—even to your own ears, and Laura breathes an, “Oh,” before she goes about her daily organizational routine after the end of her lectures.  
.  
You get back before sunrise, mainly because you’re so tired and nothing is making you feel better. You’re waiting for your mother to find out, to not believe you—for the past to happen again. For forever to be now.  
Before you go back, you buy a bottle of tequila—it makes you laugh, because you have a fake ID, and technically you’re 344 years old—and stuff it in your bag; Laura will have a fit if she sees it.  
Once she leaves for class you drink yourself into as much oblivion as you can.  
.  
You have a hangover, which strikes you as hilarious each time it happens, but then Laura has Danny and LaFontaine and Perry over, and you really aren’t this grumpy usually, but there’s light and noise and your head is killing you more than normal.  
And then they leave, finally, and Laura looks over at you before gingerly crossing onto your side of the room. When you make no move in retaliation she sits on the foot of your bed.  
“You seem more angsty than normal,” she says, “and while I don’t really care, you are technically supposed to be stopping a pack of vampires from taking me, so I would like it if I knew—”  
“Sweetheart,” you say, and the name slips out with not nearly as much malice as you’d like. “You have no idea.”  
She sits up straighter. “Then just tell me what’s wrong, Carmilla. I may be idealistic and naive and not concerned enough about proper nutrition, but I can handle it.”  
Your laugh is hollow. “You really can’t, cupcake,” you say, and you climb out of bed and ignore how good her warm hand feels when she grasps your upper arm. You shrug it off instead.  
.  
When your body jerks itself awake, you’re disoriented until you see her stupid yellow pillow and there’s that warm hand again, on your shoulder.  
“I just came back from Calc,” she says, and you press your eyes shut and will your body to stop shaking. “You were having a nightmare, I think, and I—”  
“You’re fine,” you say. “And I’m okay.”  
“You’re trembling,” she says quietly.   
“I’m just hungry,” you say, and the lie sounds hollow even to you. “I haven’t eaten in a while.”  
“I really wish you’d let me help,” she says, and she holds out her hand, and here you are, despite yourself, taking it.  
.  
You never tell her that the way they showed your true nature to Elle was by breaking so much of your body and not letting you die, and then forcing her to see you. Your bones had almost a century to heal in that coffin, and they never really did.  
What you wanted to run from was that happening again. What you wanted to save yourself from was wanting, more than anything, to die.  
But here you are, again, in love with a beautiful girl who thinks far too much of the world, who wouldn’t believe the darkness even if she was forced to see it herself.  
.  
She walks into the room smiling at seven in the evening, then presents you with a bottle of quite possibly the worst rosé wine you’ve ever seen.   
“I thought we could, you know, have a girls night in, watch some Grey’s Anatomy, have some wine.”  
A real laugh unexpectedly fights its way from the cavern of your chest. “Only if we have real wine,” you say, and her brow knits together. “Hold on.”  
You hurry to your alcohol stash in the basement of the Humanities Offices—you’ve lived a long time, and you’re not picky about your liquor, but you spent a fair amount of time in French wine country, so your palate is refined in that aspect, and you’re absolutely sure Laura has never experienced a 1987 Loire Valley pinot noir.  
You take two bottles back with you, and it’s a terrible, terrible idea, but she falls asleep on your chest after three glasses, and she’s beautiful, and you’re in far, far too deep.  
.  
She wakes up with a groan the next morning, and you can’t help yourself at all when you trace her lips with your finger.   
You figure that if Benjamin was right, and history does turn on a wheel, your marrow has been waiting for depletion for years, and at least this time you know how something brighter tastes. She runs her fingers through your hair and brushes aside your bangs, and you still do have a choice. Maybe it’s the wrong one, maybe you’re asking to be demolished again, but for once your hands are steady, and she gives you a small nod before you lean forward and kiss her.


End file.
